mystery as whether he proceeds from both Persons or only from God the Father? And, secondly, the question is still, as always, the accusation of the Orthodox against Catholics, not ours against them. They greedily found this charge, and they have never ceased clamouring about it as if it were the root of the whole Christian faith. True, two of our councils (Lyons II and Florence) defined the Filioque, though with every possible moderation and tolerance towards their view; but that was only after they had talked about it, and anathematized us for centuries. Even now Rome has never asked them to say the words in their Creed, the Uniates do not do so, although, of course, every Catholic must believe what was defined at Florence. It is they who cannot forgive us for saying it in our Creed. A question, first raked up simply as a convenient weapon against the Pope, has loomed so large to them that they really seem to think it the chief point of the faith. Let any one look at the confessions and documents they have drawn up since the schism and count the pages devoted to this question alone. And they all know about it. Schoolboys learn at the very beginning of their catechism about the horrible heresy of the Latins on this point. Greek officers, boatmen, porters, are not distinguished for theological scholarship, but they all know that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone. The young men at Athens, who have dabbled in higher criticism and Darwinism, are shaky about many points of the Christian faith, but on one point they never swerve: the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son. Mr. Skarlatos Byzantios has composed a very useful Greek-French lexicon.[1] When he comes to the preposition ἐξ, one example of its use at once occurs to him, and he illustrates the fact that it takes the genitive by this sentence: Τὸ ἄγιου πνεῦμα ἐκπορεύεται ἐκ μόνου τοῦ Πατρός which he proceeds to translate for the Western student by informing him, "le Saint-Esprit procède du Père seul." At any rate the Catholic Church has kept a righter sense of proportion. We do not teach our children much about this question. When its place comes in the treatise de Deo trino our theologians learn what has to be said about it, but in sermons
- ↑ Athens, 1888.
